It looks as though the gods of triathlon just aren't smiling on the professionals at the moment. First we get the news about Greg Welch and now we hear that Karen Smyers has thyroid cancer. Unlike Greg's heart condition, hers is not immediately life threatening if she continues to train and so she's doing just that. Karen is one of the nicest people I've had the good fortune to meet on the professional circuit and to say that she has had a run of bad luck would be a masterful understatement: first the severed hamstring, then the sideswipe by a truck, then the broken collarbone and now this. Much more detail on both these athletes and their situation can be found on TriathlonLive and SlowTwitch.